Dynamics of gas exchange and heart rate signal entropy in standard cardiopulmonary exercise testing during critical periods of growth and development

Abstract Standard cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) produces a rich dataset but its current analysis is often limited to a few derived variables such as maximal or peak oxygen uptake (V̇O2). We tested whether breath‐by‐breath CPET data could be used to determine sample entropy (SampEn) in 81 healthy children and adolescents (age 7–18 years old, equal sex distribution). To overcome challenges of the relatively small time‐series CPET data size and its nonstationarity, we developed a Python algorithm for short‐duration physiological signals. Comparing pre‐ and post‐ventilatory threshold (VT1) CPET phases, we found: (1) SampEn decreased by 9.46% for V̇O2 and 5.01% for V̇CO2 (p